Seattle Explored53:44

Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site

A new comic novel pokes fun at Seattle and its residents. We’ll settle in on Seattle.

The top of the Space Needle sports a new coat of orange, called "galaxy gold" when it first appeared 50 years ago atop the structure, as part of the landmark's 50th anniversary celebration Monday, April 23, 2012, in Seattle. The Space Needle, 605 feet tall, officially opened on the first day of the World's Fair April 21, 1962. (AP)

Maria Semple is a very funny lady. She wrote for Arrested Development, for Mad About You, for Saturday Night Live, for Ellen. Now she’s writing about Seattle. She’s got a big comic novel out with all kinds of family craziness. But the setting is deep Seattle. The Emerald City, locals call it. Oz.

We think of Seattle as the heart of coolness. Cool, coffee, grunge, mountains. She’s got a tougher take. Stinging. Wickedly funny. A send-up.

This hour, On Point: we’ve got Maria Semple and a great crew out of the Emerald City to settle in, with affection and a cocked eye, on Seattle.-Tom Ashbrook

From Tom's Reading List

The Stranger "And boy does Fox hate it here in the "dreary upper-left corner." She hates that her husband loves it so much, has become a "bike-riding, Subaru-driving, Keen-wearing alter ego" of his old self. She seethes over the five-way intersections and bucolic drivers, and the simple fact that she lives in a state that borders Idaho. She rages against the homeless people with a snotty, entitled air of wealth ("Why does every beggar have a pit bull?"). "

New York Times "Maria Semple made an instant, jarring discovery when she moved with her boyfriend and daughter from Los Angeles to Seattle, a city whose Patagonia-clad inhabitants like to talk about bicycling, the environment and the eternally dull question (in her opinion) of whether it might rain."

Seattle Times "If you're one of a long line of people waiting for your library copy of Maria Semple's hilarious new novel "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which sends up Seattle's new rich like nothing else, console yourself while you wait by viewing this "book trailer" (for the uninitiated, a "book trailer," like a movie trailer, is a short advertisement for an upcoming book)."

Excerpt: Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Playlist

North by Northwest - Blue Scholars

Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden

Seattle - Perry Como

Video: Maria Semple

Check out this video with Tom Skerritt, Jeopardy champs and author Garth Stein.